


Here Be Dragons

by carnivalinsidemyhead



Category: Take That
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dragons, F/M, Fantasy, M/M, True Love, fairy tale, magical universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-06 17:02:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20510465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carnivalinsidemyhead/pseuds/carnivalinsidemyhead
Summary: They’d been human once. They recall it vividly although they could not recall how to act human or recall all these long years later exactly how they had come to be not human. All that is clear in their minds is that one minute they were performing in a village square and the next minute they were all dragons.Well, not all. One of them remains human.But as he hasn’t aged a single day in over four hundred years and can more or less telepathically communicate with dragons, Mark isn’t precisely human anymore either.





	Here Be Dragons

They’d been human once. Hundreds of years before. A sort of ragged assembly of carnival performers, of clowns and minstrels and dancers wandering in and out of different villages and never really being at home in any of them. 

They’d been human once. They recall it vividly although they could not recall how to act human or recall all these long years later exactly how they had come to be not human. All that is clear in their minds is that one minute they were performing in a village square and the next minute they were all dragons. 

Well, not all. One of them remains human. 

But as he hasn’t aged a single day in over four hundred years and can more or less telepathically communicate with dragons, Mark isn’t precisely human anymore either.

They talked about him, he knew. There were tales passed down through generations. Woven by bards in village squares like the ones where they had once performed at first and now written in storybooks for children. Of the magical boy who lived in a cave with his four dragon companions.

He often wonders if things would have been different had he not stayed with them. If he had never entered the cave which held him fast within its walls. If they had left him behind when they first took flight, would time have passed for him like for other people? Would he have grown up past the cusp of boy and man where he hovered indefinitely? Grown old? Fallen in love? Had a family? Died?

Well, he actually had fallen in love. Few of the tales recalled that part of the story. Though he worries that it would have been better for Emma if he hadn’t. 

But he mustn’t think that way.

Still, he often wonders if he should have stayed behind. 

But Robbie, tall, laughing, black haired Robbie, his best friend in all the world, no matter if his form were human or dragon, had bowed his neck down low enough for Mark to take hold and climb upon his back and Mark had done so without hesitation and they had risen into the air together, Mark holding tightly to Robbie’s obsidian and emerald scales because to not be with Robbie did not bear thinking.

Besides it was cozy in the cave. Being surrounded by four fire breathing dragons definitely kept the cold at bay.

And tending four fire breathing dragons definitely kept him busy.

Even if it did seem that a good half of his time was spent breaking up squabbles between Robbie and Gary.

If he had stayed an ordinary human, he’d no doubt run in terror at the sight of a massive black and green dragon rearing back to strike at a slightly less massive but still intimidating gold and blue dragon equally poised to strike, but as it was he simply rolled his eyes and bonked them both soundly on their snouts. 

“Oi! Behave, you stupid gits!”

It was a marital quarrel between the two, if such things could be said to occur among dragons. There was an elaborate courtship system involving the exchange of brightly polished stones, much like with humans, only the stones were moved about more freely between the four dragons than they would have been among humans. And the dragons moved more freely among themselves. The rule remained though that you did not lie with another without first matching your stones together and Robbie had come upon Gary lying with Howard while still bearing Robbie’s stone and had taken strong objection to the sight. 

It would be far less aggravating, thought Mark more than once, if they would all just pick one partner and stick with them, but who was he to interfere in the mating habits of dragons?

He sighs quietly to himself as he chops potatoes for the day’s stew and adds them to the pot hanging over the hearth. He feels a cold snout nuzzling the back of his neck and turns round to pet the long, sleek, bronze and sky blue form looking anxiously at him.

“I’m alright, Jay,” he reassures him. 

Jason gives him a searching look.

“I’m just lonely is all.”

Jason gives him another look, an inquiring one this time.

“No I don’t need you to start the fire just yet.”

Jason nods then bows his neck down to rest his head against Mark’s face, a gesture which means “I miss her too.”

They had taken it upon themselves, the dragons that is, to find Mark a bride. They had each other for bedmates after all, it wasn’t fair that Mark had to be alone. 

And besides what were dragons for if not stealing princesses?

Mark scolded them severely each time they brought home a new princess.

“You can’t just *steal* people, surely you remember that? You’re scaring these poor girls half to death!”

And the dragons would bow their heads and look contrite and promise not to do it anymore.

And then they would bring back another princess not a month later.

The first half dozen princesses were hopeless. 

Then they brought home the seventh princess, a copper haired beauty with a gentle warmth and calm manner.

The other princesses had screamed in terror at the sight of the dragons. 

Emma had smiled serenely and reached up to scritch Howard’s ears. She’d been waiting for them. 

“Take me to my love,” she said as she climbed on his back.

It had been love at first sight for both of them when they met. Emma settled into living with dragons like she was born for it and after a brief courtship period where they became acquainted with one another and a wedding night in the back recesses of the cave where they hung a banner reading “No Dragons Allowed” from which they eventually emerged, blushing, to the sight of all the dragons rustling their wings in applause, all seemed set for them all to live happily ever after.

And for quite a while, they did. But for one thing.

Time did not freeze for Emma like it did for Mark and the dragons.

As the years passed, she grew frail and stooped. Her hair turned white. Her skin wrinkled. Occasionally her memory faltered.

She stayed as beautiful as ever in Mark’s eyes though.

She passed away in his arms one morning, the dragons circling around the pair protectively.

They’d had sixty years together. Sixty years of being gloriously happy together. 

That was far more than most people ever got.

It wasn’t enough, though. Not for someone who is immortal.

He wonders almost daily, if he should have left the cave and the dragons while he had the chance. When he first noticed that Emma was growing old without him. 

If he should have given up his eternal youth and immortality to grow old beside her. To die beside her.

But the fear of growing old, of changing, of leaving behind his lifelong companions held him back.

And so he has spent the last two hundred years or so feeling a soul deep loneliness he doesn’t quite have words for.

He has the dragons still. He will always have the dragons. And he loves them all dearly.

Yet it is not the same.

It comes to him that night, what it is he needs to do. What he’s needed to do for years.

It’s time. It’s past time. Finally, in his heart, he’s ready. 

He awakens early the next morning, before the dragons rise, and takes his first tentative step out of the cave.

“Goodbye,” he whispers to their sleeping forms, then walks out of the mouth of the cave.

He crumbles into dust instantly. 

But then, in what feels like only a few moments later, he finds himself standing at the foot of a hill covered in heather and Emma, looking impossibly young and beautiful, is waiting for him at the top.

“Took you long enough,” she says, eyes twinkling.

He smiles at her bright as the sun as she reaches out and pulls him up and for the first time in over two hundred years, he kisses his bride once more. 

And for the first time in over two hundred years, he is finally at peace.


End file.
